Saint Pierre and Miquelon's politics: French law with its own customs

What kind of French territory the archipelago is

The record calls Saint Pierre and Miquelon a dependency of France, and the French Constitution calls it an overseas collectivity. Its official name keeps an older form, the Collectivité territoriale de Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. The Senate's survey of overseas France in the Constitution, published in 2022, groups it with Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna under Article 74, the article for territories whose statutes are written for them one by one in organic laws, as opposed to the five overseas departments under Article 73, where French law applies almost as it does in France itself.

The archipelago has passed through nearly every status French law offers its overseas territories. The IEDOM's annual report sets out the sequence.

The Senate notes that every Article 74 territory holds law-making power of its own, in fields that range from a few to many. In Saint Pierre and Miquelon the field is narrow and the default runs the other way: French Wikipedia and the Senate describe a regime of legislative inclusion, in which the laws and regulations of the Republic apply automatically, as in a department, unless they fall inside the collectivity's own fields. Inside those fields the local assembly writes the rules.

How the islands came to stay French

At each fork the islands chose the status that tied them more closely to France. After the constitutional referendum of 1958 they were offered full integration, self-government inside the French Community or their existing status, and kept the existing status. In 1976 they became a department. The step back to a territorial collectivity in 1985 took them out of the European Communities, and English Wikipedia's history article records that the change was made under pressure from the United States. No independence movement appears in any of the sources consulted for this article.

What the Territorial Council decides

The Territorial Council has 19 members, 15 from Saint-Pierre and four from Miquelon-Langlade, and since 2012 it has been elected for five years, against six years before. The CNFPT's guide to overseas institutions and French Wikipedia describe the system: one constituency with two communal sections, closed lists of 23 candidates alternating men and women, and a bonus of half the seats for the list that comes first, which gives it eight seats in Saint-Pierre and two in Miquelon-Langlade before the rest are shared out proportionally. A list needs an absolute majority and the votes of a quarter of registered electors to win the bonus in the first round; otherwise the lists with at least 10% go to a second round, where coming first is enough. The last election was held in March 2022.

The council elects its president, who has held the executive since 2 March 1982, and an executive council of the president, five vice-presidents and two other councillors. The council can remove the president by a constructive motion of no confidence, one that names the successor. A consultative economic, social and cultural council, drawn from trade bodies, unions and associations, advises it. The council sits in the Hôtel du Territoire in Saint-Pierre.

The assembly is older than its present name. A decree of 5 April 1885 created a general council for the colony, and a second decree dissolved it on 25 June 1897 because the colony had too few people to justify one, so the governor took its powers back. The general council returned on 25 October 1946 and became the Territorial Council under the law of 2007.

Which powers the collectivity holds

The council does the work of both a French department and a region, with six exceptions written into article LO 6414-1 of the general code of local authorities. In return it holds powers no French department has. The IEDOM lists both sides.

The tax power is used. The IEDOM notes that the islands' local tax code has no indirect taxes of the value added kind, and that the tax office, a state service made available to the collectivity, collected an average of more than €27.7 million a year over the three years to 2024, 82% of it for the collectivity. Customs duties on everything landed, whether from Canada or from France, go to the local budget. In 2024 the collectivity's real receipts were €57.2 million and its real spending €55.8 million, with 196 staff. It also owns the ferries, the ice rink, the cultural and sports centre in Saint-Pierre and the Maison de la nature in Miquelon, and La 1ère reported in 2022 that it conducts the islands' relations with the neighbouring Canadian provinces and with the European Union.

What the prefect and the state still hold

The prefect, appointed by the President of the Republic and based in Saint-Pierre, represents the state and answers for national interests, law enforcement, public order and the control of legality. English Wikipedia describes a two-headed executive, the prefect on one side and the president of the council on the other, and lists the services under each: the state runs health administration, education, the gendarmerie, civil aviation and border police, while the tax and customs services work for the collectivity under the prefect's authority.

The archipelago's schools follow the French national curriculum and belong to the education authority of Normandy. Defence belongs to France, and the French Navy keeps the patrol vessel Fulmar at Saint-Pierre. French Wikipedia puts the gendarmerie command at 28 active personnel and four reservists under a colonel, and records the gendarmerie's presence on the islands without a break since 1816. The courts are a superior court of appeal, a court of first instance, an administrative court and a prison, and the regional audit chamber that checks the collectivity's accounts sits at Noisiel, in metropolitan France. The border police have been on the islands since 1977.

Islanders vote in every French national election. The archipelago elects one deputy to the National Assembly and one senator, and has one member of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council. Its voters also take part in elections to the European Parliament.

Why three local authorities overlap

Two communes, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon-Langlade, sit inside a collectivity that has the powers of a department and a region. They have the powers of an ordinary French commune, with exceptions that cut both ways. Outremers360 noted in a report on the statute debate that planning belongs to the Territorial Council and not to the communes, while fire and rescue, a departmental power everywhere else since 1996, is run by the communes. A third commune, Île-aux-Marins, existed until 1945, when Saint-Pierre absorbed it.

That arrangement prompted a debate on reform from 2015. A report by Olléon proposed a single collectivity that would absorb the communes, and a second report, by three experts mandated by the government, proposed a single body called a Territorial Congress. The elected officials divided: the president of the council at the time opposed the single collectivity, and the mayor of Saint-Pierre, also the senator, favoured a reinforced council with the two islands as electoral districts. Outremers360 reported that a preference referendum had been proposed. The statute in force is still the organic law of 2007, as the IEDOM's report for 2024 records. When the Senate heard the next president of the council in June 2020, he did not seek any change to the statute or its powers and asked only for adjustments at the margin, among them the right of the local executive to ask the administrative court for an opinion, which only the state's representative has.

How Europe treats islands outside the Union

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is an overseas country and territory of the European Union, one of 13 the IEDOM counts, and not part of the Union itself. The Union's law does not apply there automatically, the islands are outside the European customs territory, and they are outside the Schengen area, with their own entry rules. Their people are French and therefore European citizens, with European passports and votes in European elections. The euro has been the official currency since 1 January 1999, and the IEDOM notes that among the overseas countries and territories the euro is used only here and in Saint Barthélemy.

The status shapes trade and money. Imports into the Union from the overseas countries and territories pay no duties and face no quotas. Union technical standards do not have to apply, which the IEDOM says eases trade with the United States and Canada, and the trade agreement between the Union and Canada signed on 30 October 2016 does not apply directly because the islands are outside the customs territory. The European banking passport does not reach them, so only banks licensed in France can operate. Funding comes through the Union's programmes for these territories: €26 million from the 11th European Development Fund for 2014 to 2020 and €27 million for 2021 to 2027 under the convention signed in February 2023, both aimed mainly at tourism.

How relations with Canada are conducted

Most of the archipelago's foreign relations are with one neighbour. France is a member of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization on behalf of the islands since 1996 and of the Atlantic tuna commission since 7 November 1968, and the president of the council leads the delegation of "France in the name of Saint Pierre and Miquelon" at their meetings. The islands also sit on the Regional Joint Cooperation Commission with Atlantic Canada and fall inside the Halifax search and rescue region.

The fisheries agreement of 2 December 1994 lets each side fish in the other's zone under quotas set each year by a Franco-Canadian council, and it overrides the economic zone line for the species it covers. A separate agreement on Atlantic halibut was concluded in September 2024, with no end date and a review every three years: it gives the archipelago 3% of the total catch Canada sets, 147.8 tonnes for the 2024 to 2025 season, and lifts the ban on the islands' boats landing halibut in Canadian ports. Health care runs on another agreement: since 1994 islanders can be treated in St. John's, and French Wikipedia records 844 medical evacuations in 2016, 82% of them to Canada.

Where the two governments disagree

The sea is where they part. The history article describes the arbitral award of 1992 that fixed the economic zone. The award did not settle the continental shelf, and France's submission of April 2014 to the United Nations commission claims shelf beyond 200 nautical miles south of the islands. Canada rejected "any claim by the French Republic to any maritime area, including any areas of continental shelf" in a note of 9 November 2009, and France's own summary records that a maritime dispute exists. This catalogue records the dispute and takes no position on it. French Wikipedia also records a decision announced in January 2026 to hand part of the management of the airport's approach airspace, below 6,000 feet, to Canadian services, which a senator for the islands criticised as a bad signal for sovereignty and the government presented as a rationalisation with no effect on it.